VRHealth Announces Breakthrough VR-AI Therapy Reducing Chemotherapy-Induced Hot Flashes and Night Sweats in Breast Cancer Patients by 50%

Virtual reality technology is gradually becoming part of our daily lives, permeating various industries, including the pharmaceutical sector. According to foreign media reports cited by VCBeat (WeChat official account: vcbeat), VRHealth, a virtual reality (VR) healthcare company, recently released its latest research report. The report indicates that breast cancer patients suffering from hot flashes and night sweats experienced a 50% reduction in these symptoms after undergoing the company’s VR-AI therapy.

Hot flashes and night sweats in breast cancer patients are caused by hormonal imbalances following chemotherapy. These symptoms lead to fatigue and difficulty falling asleep, thereby hindering patients’ anti-cancer treatment progress. After a three-week VR therapy program administered by VRHealth’s professional AI-VR therapists, patients’ sleep quality showed significant improvement.

VR Panorama (Image Source: Official Website)

During this treatment, VRHealth had patients wear VR headsets daily for 24 days to experience fully immersive virtual reality. Through the VR headsets, patients were presented with a 360-degree panoramic view of winter snowscapes, allowing clinicians to monitor their daily living conditions. After daily exposure to the “very cold” virtual winter environment, breast cancer patients experienced a 50% reduction in hot flashes and night sweats. Furthermore, the study found that psychological distress was also reduced among some breast cancer patients with comorbid mental health conditions.

Eran Orr, CEO of VRHealth, stated, “This clinical study report demonstrates that we have provided a new and highly effective treatment for patients suffering from hot flashes and night sweats. The experimental results confirm that virtual reality intervention, as a non-pharmacological therapy, can alleviate patients’ symptoms.”

VRHealth is the world’s first certified virtual reality (VR) healthcare company, with all its therapeutic applications registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). VRHealth establishes predefined virtual environments and assigns specific tasks tailored to patients’ symptoms, enabling them to alleviate physical symptoms spontaneously while engaging in “game-like” activities. Currently, the therapeutic applications developed by VRHealth are primarily used to improve behavioral disorders, musculoskeletal pain, and certain psychological conditions.

VRHealth leverages extended reality (XR) technology—a fusion of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR)—to develop therapeutic applications. The platform collects data on patient interactions with virtual objects, analyzes symptom relief through AI-powered cloud computing, and optimizes therapeutic efficacy to deliver personalized treatment plans for patients.

VRHealth Selected Applications (Images Sourced from Official Website)

Currently, VRHealth has developed ten primary therapeutic applications: Cognitive Training App, Neck Training App, Memory Training App, Meditation App, Hot Flash App, Pain Distraction App, Cervical ROM Assessment and Rehabilitation App, Upper Limb Rehabilitation and Shoulder ROM Assessment App, Motor-Cognitive Training and Assessment App, and Cervical and Shoulder Joint Proprioception Assessment and Training App. Among these ten applications, the latter five are specifically designed for outdoor therapy.

It is worth mentioning a clinical trial conducted by the company in 2018. VRHealth selected eight patients with chronic paraplegia for a 12-month VR therapy program. During the trial, VRHealth had the paraplegic participants use their own brains to move virtual bodies in a virtual reality environment, thereby training their motor cortexes. After the trial, all participants reported somatosensory perceptions, including pain and touch, in multiple cortical regions of the brain, and 50% of the patients improved from complete to incomplete paraplegia. One participant, who had suffered from chronic paraplegia for 13 years, was able to move her feet without assistance after the trial concluded.

VRHealth’s hardware devices are currently priced at $199 per unit. Physicians pay a monthly subscription fee of $29 for the software, while patients who subscribe directly pay $19 per month.

VRHealth was founded in 2016, with its headquarters in Tel Aviv, a coastal city in Israel, and a branch office in Boston, USA. To date, the company has completed two seed funding rounds, raising a total of approximately $4 million.

(Editor: Wang Chan)